There was Sheriff Churchill.... Well, there was something which could never be brought home to him. It had been well and successfully managed.... But he wanted no more of that--unless absolute necessity demanded. If he could have married the girl! That would have shut her mouth and at the same time have given him a desirable wife--one whom he would have taken pride in introducing into such functions as that which he had attended at the capital.... But he could not marry her.... She could be made to disappear as Churchill had disappeared--but three disappearances would be rather too many. If three persons vanished, folks would regard it as rather more than a coincidence. Therefore Carmel and Pell would not vanish unless all other expedients failed. If, however, he could keep his word to her; if he could smash her life, place her in a position which would overwhelm her, destroy her self-respect, send her crashing down in some infamous way--that would serve so much better.... He had found the way to do it, but luck intervened. Instead of being where he intended she should be, Carmel appeared safely in the capital--and multiplied the danger she represented. He wondered if the whole scheme had gone awry. There was no word from Jenney. Nothing as to the whereabouts of Evan Pell. Pell was of importance in Fownes’s plan--indispensable to it. Deputy Jenney was indispensable to it, as were Peewee Bangs and his Lakeside Hotel.... The plan had been so simple and would have been so effective. If Carmel had not gone to the capital, but, instead, had adventured to the Lakeside Hotel to investigate the mysterious note--the rest was simple. She would have been followed; Pell would have been followed. To seize and imprison the pair in a room in the unsavory Lakeside Hotel would have been a mere matter of a couple of strong arms.... To imprison them in the same room! Following that, the room being set according to the demands of the occasion, the hotel would have been raided. Deputy Jenney, that public-spirited official, would have conducted the raid.... The posse would have found Carmel and Pell in their room, surrounded by evidences of such orgies as the Lakeside was famous for. They would have been arrested together, taken to the jail.... That was all, but it would have sufficed. Never again could Carmel hold up her head; she would be destroyed utterly, driven out of Gibeon, made forever ineffective. It was really better than killing her outright.... Abner alighted at Gibeon’s depot and was driven to his office. He summoned Jenney, who came with alacrity. “Well, Sheriff?” said Abner, jocularly. “Much obleeged,” said Jenney. “What happened?” “The girl went off some’eres in Whitefield’s auto. Didn’t git back till some time in the mornin’.... But we got _him_.” “Eh?” “We got him--the perfessor.”